We´re in San Salvador, the big capitol city, about 2.5 million inhabitants. Chris and I had heard from other travellers and read in books that this city was dirty, over-polluted and ugly. When we arrived we found that those sources couldn´t have been more wrong. It´s actually quite a pleasant city, even for U.S. standards; it´s full of trees and lots of foliage and is situated right in the midst of picturesque mountains and volcanos. In regards to the polution, sure, it´s there. But no more than in any other U.S. city of comparable size.
Culture of San Salvador: very modern and metropolitan in areas near the city center, again, not too different to what I´m used to in Seattle. There are a lot of fashionistas and many educated people who appreciate art and literature. Malls are very popular here. Big time. It´s where middle class and upper class people go. And they´re very similar to those in the U.S.
San Salvador is also split into classes like any other large city: as one gets farther away from the city center, one encounters more lower-class neighborhoods.
We are staying with Karla, the intelligent, amiable, beautiful friend of my family. Her apartment is an anomaly simply because the only people that live there are her and her sister. Yes, it´s in Central America! Normally one encounters families of 14 living together. It´s very comfortable and she treats us like family. We have been yakking and yakking for the past three days and Chris and I have been going to bed with bulging brains because of so much Spanish. We´ve ended up talking to her more often than we talked to our host family during Spanish school. I think that if we had another month with Karla we´d be completely fluent. All in all, we´ve been going to bed very exhausted and sleeping very well. And to think that all this time Chris only needed to speak Spanish all day in order to sleep soundly...
Unfortunately I re-injured my ankle a few days ago (I sprained it last February). So we´ve been limiting our activity in order for the sucker to heal sufficiently. Hopefully next week we´ll be able to do some hiking. Anyways, because of laying off the ol´ ankle as much as possible, we went to see the new Harry Potter movie(for those who didn´t know, I´m a guilty fanatic), subtitled. I´ve never been able to understand why anyone would want to see any movie dubbed, aside from comic relief. I definitely will always prefer to watch films with the original language and subtitles in order to understand the intent of the acting and to hear the original voices of the actors. We also visited the Museum of Modern Art yesterday and found that the art of El Salvador is very cool, very well done. There was an exhibit featuring a Mexican artist (can´t remember the name) whose images were all of monkeys. Each image was paired with excerpts of Kafka´s. All in all the pieces were very, very interesting.
In the next few days I´m going to read my new copy of Harry Potter (yay!) and we´re going to try to find some local music and maybe visit another museum.
Con mucho amor...
Monday, July 30, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Ode to El Salvador
So far, El Salvador rocks:
1. the food offers more variety
2. the people are incredibly friendly. they still stare at us, like in Guatemala and Honduras, but when we say hello they respond and greet us. also, a few people have gone out of their way t o help us.
3. there are few gringos here
4. the beautiful landscapes are never ending. Guatemala and Honduras had amazing landscapes, too, but the ones here have so far been unrelenting.
Our first stop was in La Palma, located in the north. In the 1970´s a famous painter named Fernando Llort moved there and taught practically the entire 3,000-person population his painting techinques. Since then, 75% of the inhabitants are employed as artists or crafters. (what is the name of the profession for making crafts?) The style of painting is reminds me a little of Matisse or pre-cubist Picasso, with very crude figures and bright, vivid colors. Not only are there galleries and craft shops everywhere, but most of the buildings are decorated with beautiful murals.
Now we are stationed in Suchitoto, about an hour north of the capitol. This town has about 25,000 habitantes (oops, a perfect example of how I am always mixing up english with spanish), I mean inhabitants, and it is known for being the starting point of their gruesome civil war (the dates of the war are debatable but the bulk of the final phase took place approximately from 1980-1995; the country has experienced civil and revolutionary wars on and off for practically forever). It´s also well known for having an established arts scene. The town itself is very beautiful, and all of the restaurants and local establishments also serve as art galleries. Much of the art we´ve seen is war themed. Last night we had dinner at a restaurant with interesting war sculptures (many of the materials were actually saved from the war) in their garden area. We then went out for a beer at a very Bohemian bar decorated with posters of musicians and revolutionary political figures. Very different from anything we´ve experienced thus far. That´s my word of the day for this town: Bohemian.
Our hotel is very nice and has a rooftop terrace with an exquisite view of the whole town and its surrounding mountains and nearby lake. It was just our luck to catch probably the most incredible lightning storm I´ve ever seen from the terrace. When we went to bed and the storm moved in very close and the booming thunder kept waking me up. Needless to say Chris didn´t get much sleep because I kept waking him up with my startled screams. Poor guy has not really been able to sleep well this whole trip. We´re already planning on how to turn the bedroom of our apartment-to-be into a dark cave to ensure distraction-free sleep.
Ode to the food: As I´ve already stated, the food here offers a lot of variety and is very, very good. For example...
Ode to my breakfast:
REAL coffee, omelet with avocado and cheese, plantains, bread. Although Central America is know for its coffee, the locals don´t drink anything aside from instant coffee. I must tell you that this coffee made me feel serendipitous. Chris had horchata with his breakfast, yum yum yum.
Another note:
1. Salvadoreños use U.S. currency. this feels very odd, and therefore both Chris and I have feel more stingy about spending money. i guess there´s a psychological element to travelling and spending currency that looks like play money.
Today we plan on hiking to a nearby waterfall that is said to have amazing rock formations. The day after next we are heading to San Salvador to meet up with Karla, a family friend who lived with my aunt and uncle in Alaska the year before last. We look forward to being able to experience the area with a local family. And hopefully get some inside advice about other areas in the country.
Time to go see more art and find more yummy things to eat.
1. the food offers more variety
2. the people are incredibly friendly. they still stare at us, like in Guatemala and Honduras, but when we say hello they respond and greet us. also, a few people have gone out of their way t o help us.
3. there are few gringos here
4. the beautiful landscapes are never ending. Guatemala and Honduras had amazing landscapes, too, but the ones here have so far been unrelenting.
Our first stop was in La Palma, located in the north. In the 1970´s a famous painter named Fernando Llort moved there and taught practically the entire 3,000-person population his painting techinques. Since then, 75% of the inhabitants are employed as artists or crafters. (what is the name of the profession for making crafts?) The style of painting is reminds me a little of Matisse or pre-cubist Picasso, with very crude figures and bright, vivid colors. Not only are there galleries and craft shops everywhere, but most of the buildings are decorated with beautiful murals.
Now we are stationed in Suchitoto, about an hour north of the capitol. This town has about 25,000 habitantes (oops, a perfect example of how I am always mixing up english with spanish), I mean inhabitants, and it is known for being the starting point of their gruesome civil war (the dates of the war are debatable but the bulk of the final phase took place approximately from 1980-1995; the country has experienced civil and revolutionary wars on and off for practically forever). It´s also well known for having an established arts scene. The town itself is very beautiful, and all of the restaurants and local establishments also serve as art galleries. Much of the art we´ve seen is war themed. Last night we had dinner at a restaurant with interesting war sculptures (many of the materials were actually saved from the war) in their garden area. We then went out for a beer at a very Bohemian bar decorated with posters of musicians and revolutionary political figures. Very different from anything we´ve experienced thus far. That´s my word of the day for this town: Bohemian.
Our hotel is very nice and has a rooftop terrace with an exquisite view of the whole town and its surrounding mountains and nearby lake. It was just our luck to catch probably the most incredible lightning storm I´ve ever seen from the terrace. When we went to bed and the storm moved in very close and the booming thunder kept waking me up. Needless to say Chris didn´t get much sleep because I kept waking him up with my startled screams. Poor guy has not really been able to sleep well this whole trip. We´re already planning on how to turn the bedroom of our apartment-to-be into a dark cave to ensure distraction-free sleep.
Ode to the food: As I´ve already stated, the food here offers a lot of variety and is very, very good. For example...
Ode to my breakfast:
REAL coffee, omelet with avocado and cheese, plantains, bread. Although Central America is know for its coffee, the locals don´t drink anything aside from instant coffee. I must tell you that this coffee made me feel serendipitous. Chris had horchata with his breakfast, yum yum yum.
Another note:
1. Salvadoreños use U.S. currency. this feels very odd, and therefore both Chris and I have feel more stingy about spending money. i guess there´s a psychological element to travelling and spending currency that looks like play money.
Today we plan on hiking to a nearby waterfall that is said to have amazing rock formations. The day after next we are heading to San Salvador to meet up with Karla, a family friend who lived with my aunt and uncle in Alaska the year before last. We look forward to being able to experience the area with a local family. And hopefully get some inside advice about other areas in the country.
Time to go see more art and find more yummy things to eat.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
It´s a fried, fried world
We are back in Santa Rosa after a little jaunt to the town of Gracias, Honduras. We were planning to stay a while but all of the hotels in the town were full because the town was having its annual festival to celebrate Honduran culture and independence. We did manage to see a bit of a parade and browse through the street fair. It was actually quite similar to what we would call a carnival, minus the rides, in the states.
A highlight was going to Celaque National Park, a beautiful cloud forest that contains the highest peak in Honduras. We did a day hike and had the whole park to ourselves; we hiked to a lookout spot and saw some primo waterfalls. And also the weirdest-looking creature we´ve ever laid eyes on. It was a cross between a bug and a mouse and a bird. It had white, fuzzy, feathery-looking wings (the fur looked like a mouse´s), and a blue body, about the size of a mouse. The white, furry "wings" tapered at the bottom, much like those of some butterflies, and formed a white, fuzzy string that hung down a couple inches. Totally bizarro. We were in awe yet somewhat afraid of it because it was so unlike anything we´d ever seen. It´s called an "alma del perro" ("soul of the dog"). The hike was quite strenuous, and being sweaty and exhausted, it took everything we had to refrain from breaking the Honduran law and swimming in the adjacent river that supplies much the country´s and some of El Salvador´s drinking water.
After the hike Chris proceeded to grow quite ill and the next day I joined him with a bad cold. So now we are back in Santa Rosa. So we´re resting for a few days. Last night we saw "Shrek 3" at the 2nd-run theatre (the price still didn´t beat the $1.50 showings in Eugene) in Spanish, of course. We both did very well with our comprehension, I´m proud to say. Theatres in Honduras are pretty much the same as ones in the States except for the fact that people don´t turn their cell phones off and engage in loud conversation throughout the movie. Which doesn´t surprise me, because people are just generally louder here. They blare their music from both their homes and their cars, they have no muffler laws so cars create quite a racket, and standard practice for all vehicles is to honk their horns at every other car they pass, and sometimes nearly every pedestrian they pass as well. Another popular, noisy custom is for vans to drive up and down the streets, blaring political propoganda or retail advertisements. Here in Honduras the adverisements vary greatly, in Guatemala they all tended to be for cooking oil.
Last night was our first experience with cucarachas in our hotel room. Which I must say is strange for two reasons:
1) This was only the third time in all of trip when we´d seen cockroaches and we expected to see lots more in this area.
2) This was a very clean hotel, much cleaner than some in which we´ve stayed. In fact, we´ve ranked it as one of our faves.
But now we´ve changed into a newer room and are much happier about the prospect of going to bed without the lovely sound of scurrying cockroaches.
Nevertheless, things are good and we´re getting excited about getting into El Salvador. Chris is eagerly awaiting some new cuisine than involves something other than tortillas and fried chicken and french fries. I was of course expecting a multitude of tortillas (actually where here in Honduras, flour tortillas are just as common as the abundant corn tortillas of Guatemala), but I never thought that fried chicken and french fries would be a part of the daily fare. Chris and I are a little tired of fried food and have resorted to occassionally buying crackers, processed cheese and meat for lunch when we´re just too burnt out on the deep fried variety. Chris read in his guidebook that there´s a restaurant in San Salvador that specializes in large, green salads. I thought he was going to cry when he read it to me...
A highlight was going to Celaque National Park, a beautiful cloud forest that contains the highest peak in Honduras. We did a day hike and had the whole park to ourselves; we hiked to a lookout spot and saw some primo waterfalls. And also the weirdest-looking creature we´ve ever laid eyes on. It was a cross between a bug and a mouse and a bird. It had white, fuzzy, feathery-looking wings (the fur looked like a mouse´s), and a blue body, about the size of a mouse. The white, furry "wings" tapered at the bottom, much like those of some butterflies, and formed a white, fuzzy string that hung down a couple inches. Totally bizarro. We were in awe yet somewhat afraid of it because it was so unlike anything we´d ever seen. It´s called an "alma del perro" ("soul of the dog"). The hike was quite strenuous, and being sweaty and exhausted, it took everything we had to refrain from breaking the Honduran law and swimming in the adjacent river that supplies much the country´s and some of El Salvador´s drinking water.
After the hike Chris proceeded to grow quite ill and the next day I joined him with a bad cold. So now we are back in Santa Rosa. So we´re resting for a few days. Last night we saw "Shrek 3" at the 2nd-run theatre (the price still didn´t beat the $1.50 showings in Eugene) in Spanish, of course. We both did very well with our comprehension, I´m proud to say. Theatres in Honduras are pretty much the same as ones in the States except for the fact that people don´t turn their cell phones off and engage in loud conversation throughout the movie. Which doesn´t surprise me, because people are just generally louder here. They blare their music from both their homes and their cars, they have no muffler laws so cars create quite a racket, and standard practice for all vehicles is to honk their horns at every other car they pass, and sometimes nearly every pedestrian they pass as well. Another popular, noisy custom is for vans to drive up and down the streets, blaring political propoganda or retail advertisements. Here in Honduras the adverisements vary greatly, in Guatemala they all tended to be for cooking oil.
Last night was our first experience with cucarachas in our hotel room. Which I must say is strange for two reasons:
1) This was only the third time in all of trip when we´d seen cockroaches and we expected to see lots more in this area.
2) This was a very clean hotel, much cleaner than some in which we´ve stayed. In fact, we´ve ranked it as one of our faves.
But now we´ve changed into a newer room and are much happier about the prospect of going to bed without the lovely sound of scurrying cockroaches.
Nevertheless, things are good and we´re getting excited about getting into El Salvador. Chris is eagerly awaiting some new cuisine than involves something other than tortillas and fried chicken and french fries. I was of course expecting a multitude of tortillas (actually where here in Honduras, flour tortillas are just as common as the abundant corn tortillas of Guatemala), but I never thought that fried chicken and french fries would be a part of the daily fare. Chris and I are a little tired of fried food and have resorted to occassionally buying crackers, processed cheese and meat for lunch when we´re just too burnt out on the deep fried variety. Chris read in his guidebook that there´s a restaurant in San Salvador that specializes in large, green salads. I thought he was going to cry when he read it to me...
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Never Again
Never again will I stand on an already-full bus for 3 hours. But more on that later.
Chris got the scuba bug. We stayed five more days so he could do the advanced certfication, very cool. For our last five days our hotel received six more students and the previous departed. About half of the new ones were either crazy or very rude, so that didn´t create a very relaxing vibe. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the remainder of our time there, got to know some of the locals, and got to witness an amazing lightning storm. A bolt of lightning ended up striking one of the power lines on the caye that night, about 300 feet from our hotel! And, I read three books.
Yesterday, after taking an early morning ferry back to the mainland, we caught a taxi to try to find the DHL to mail a bunch of our stuff home. Note to reader: never bring rainpants, 4 pairs of socks, and a fleece jacket to Central America; it´s always so hot that even if it´s raining you will stay perfectly warm. We circled around for what seemed like hours and the driver gave up. So then we caught a bus to San Pedro, a large city in which we had to find an ATM because by this time we had only 60 lempiras - 3 dollars - to our names. The only ATM on all of the islands was never functioning. After this we found the bus terminal to our next destination. We were whisked onto a schoolbus to find that it was already full. In the states this would mean we would have had to wait for the next one. Not in Central America, my friends. In Central America you stand. Even though it was a three-hour ride. And Chris felt terrible. The minutes dragged on so slowly I found myself conjugating Spanish verbs in my head in all of the tenses. Eventually we got seats for the last 45 minutes.
It all paid off, though, because we arrived in Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, got a hotel, and got dinner. It was 5:30 pm and we had only spilt a muffin and a bag of crackers that entire day because of our money situation. We then proceeded to fall asleep at 7pm and slept until 8am. I think before this kind of travel experience I perhaps underestimated myself.
Santa Rosa is beautiful. It´s a colonial town with cobblestone streets set in the mountains. Today we relaxed and walked around a little. We found this really cool indoor cafeteria where you can find any authentic local food you desire. For breakfast we had 40 cent tamales and for lunch we each had huge plates of fried chicken, rice, cabbage salad, and tortillas. Each plate cost 1.50. Yep, this is the life. It´s also really nice to be speaking Spanish again. And, since the town in the mountains, it actually gets cool at night. We didn´t even have to turn the fan on last night.
This town has a cigar factory. Supposedly Honduran cigars compete with Cubans.
Chris confirms it, he´s already tried a couple so far on this trip. Tomorrow we plan on taking a tour of the factory.
¡Adios!
Chris got the scuba bug. We stayed five more days so he could do the advanced certfication, very cool. For our last five days our hotel received six more students and the previous departed. About half of the new ones were either crazy or very rude, so that didn´t create a very relaxing vibe. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the remainder of our time there, got to know some of the locals, and got to witness an amazing lightning storm. A bolt of lightning ended up striking one of the power lines on the caye that night, about 300 feet from our hotel! And, I read three books.
Yesterday, after taking an early morning ferry back to the mainland, we caught a taxi to try to find the DHL to mail a bunch of our stuff home. Note to reader: never bring rainpants, 4 pairs of socks, and a fleece jacket to Central America; it´s always so hot that even if it´s raining you will stay perfectly warm. We circled around for what seemed like hours and the driver gave up. So then we caught a bus to San Pedro, a large city in which we had to find an ATM because by this time we had only 60 lempiras - 3 dollars - to our names. The only ATM on all of the islands was never functioning. After this we found the bus terminal to our next destination. We were whisked onto a schoolbus to find that it was already full. In the states this would mean we would have had to wait for the next one. Not in Central America, my friends. In Central America you stand. Even though it was a three-hour ride. And Chris felt terrible. The minutes dragged on so slowly I found myself conjugating Spanish verbs in my head in all of the tenses. Eventually we got seats for the last 45 minutes.
It all paid off, though, because we arrived in Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, got a hotel, and got dinner. It was 5:30 pm and we had only spilt a muffin and a bag of crackers that entire day because of our money situation. We then proceeded to fall asleep at 7pm and slept until 8am. I think before this kind of travel experience I perhaps underestimated myself.
Santa Rosa is beautiful. It´s a colonial town with cobblestone streets set in the mountains. Today we relaxed and walked around a little. We found this really cool indoor cafeteria where you can find any authentic local food you desire. For breakfast we had 40 cent tamales and for lunch we each had huge plates of fried chicken, rice, cabbage salad, and tortillas. Each plate cost 1.50. Yep, this is the life. It´s also really nice to be speaking Spanish again. And, since the town in the mountains, it actually gets cool at night. We didn´t even have to turn the fan on last night.
This town has a cigar factory. Supposedly Honduran cigars compete with Cubans.
Chris confirms it, he´s already tried a couple so far on this trip. Tomorrow we plan on taking a tour of the factory.
¡Adios!
Monday, July 9, 2007
Scaredy-Cat in Paradise
We've been in the Bay Islands of Honduras for almost a week now. It's incredibly beautiful with clear, blue and green water. It's culturally fascinating, too, because it's was discovered by British pirates, so all of the natives are white, English speakers. Well, it's sort of English. It sounds like a mixture of Australian English, Hawaiian pigeon, and creole. Very fascinating. I actually have an easier time understanding Spanish. Not knowing this when we first arrived, Chris and I started speaking Spanish. Boy was that a mistake. The islands have only been part of Honduras for about 40 years, so it's only been since then that the "mainlanders" have come over to live and work (native islanders call them the "spanish"). The natives aren't fans of them because they brought the first automobiles and motorbikes. And trust me, the islands are not big enough for them. It's a major pain to navigate down the narrow streets amongst the cars and motorbikes. It's a very fascinating place.
We found the one scuba-diving school that is based out of a nearby caye, called Jewel Caye, a remote fishing town with a population of about 200 (which is much nicer than the touristy Bay Islands, named Utila and Roatan). They don't have cars or even motorbikes there. Hooray for no noise polution! Chris and I both started the open water scuba certification course. Disclaimer to those not related to me: I can swim, but I'm not terribly comfortable in the water, at least not like Chris the fish. When we started the course I had never even been snorkeling. So I was pretty terrified. We did our reading, watched some DVDs, and then it was time to get in the water with our gear. We started out in a very shallow area so as we could ease into it. I was pretty scared, and after we'd been under for a minute we had to practice some skills such as taking off the masks underwater and so forth. I panicked. Completely. And then our completely overzealous instructor assured me that I was ready to go down 9 feet and then proceeded to basically pressure me into it. I was as white as a sheet and froze. Still feeling panicky and a little humiliated, I had to opt out. That night I decided to quit the program and respect my limitations and just try to get comfortable with snorkel. It's possible that I might have continued with a different instructor who was willing to go at a slower pace, but I didn't want to rush it. So I have been having a blast snorkeling, socializing with the other students, and relaxing! My vacation away from my vacation. So far I've seen amazing things: a myriad of fish, including a barracuda, a jellyfish, and beautiful coral.
As for Christopher, he completed his certification yesterday! He's taken to it so naturally that we're going to stay four more days so he can also take the advanced certification course. His spotings include a loggerhead turtle and a spotted sting ray!
Many of you know that I'm a little wound-up and therefore have trouble letting myself fully relax. Well, the island life has finally ensured a relaxed Auna. Hooray! The only gripe about the caye is that all they eat is fried food. Our choices are fried fish, fried chicked, fried hamburgers, and nachos made with fried plantains. And what does it all come with? French fries, of course! Sometimes a salad drenched with Thousand Island dressing is we're lucky. But as with everything else I've previously bitched about on this blog, I really shouldn't be bitching because we're in PARADISE!
Love to all!
We found the one scuba-diving school that is based out of a nearby caye, called Jewel Caye, a remote fishing town with a population of about 200 (which is much nicer than the touristy Bay Islands, named Utila and Roatan). They don't have cars or even motorbikes there. Hooray for no noise polution! Chris and I both started the open water scuba certification course. Disclaimer to those not related to me: I can swim, but I'm not terribly comfortable in the water, at least not like Chris the fish. When we started the course I had never even been snorkeling. So I was pretty terrified. We did our reading, watched some DVDs, and then it was time to get in the water with our gear. We started out in a very shallow area so as we could ease into it. I was pretty scared, and after we'd been under for a minute we had to practice some skills such as taking off the masks underwater and so forth. I panicked. Completely. And then our completely overzealous instructor assured me that I was ready to go down 9 feet and then proceeded to basically pressure me into it. I was as white as a sheet and froze. Still feeling panicky and a little humiliated, I had to opt out. That night I decided to quit the program and respect my limitations and just try to get comfortable with snorkel. It's possible that I might have continued with a different instructor who was willing to go at a slower pace, but I didn't want to rush it. So I have been having a blast snorkeling, socializing with the other students, and relaxing! My vacation away from my vacation. So far I've seen amazing things: a myriad of fish, including a barracuda, a jellyfish, and beautiful coral.
As for Christopher, he completed his certification yesterday! He's taken to it so naturally that we're going to stay four more days so he can also take the advanced certification course. His spotings include a loggerhead turtle and a spotted sting ray!
Many of you know that I'm a little wound-up and therefore have trouble letting myself fully relax. Well, the island life has finally ensured a relaxed Auna. Hooray! The only gripe about the caye is that all they eat is fried food. Our choices are fried fish, fried chicked, fried hamburgers, and nachos made with fried plantains. And what does it all come with? French fries, of course! Sometimes a salad drenched with Thousand Island dressing is we're lucky. But as with everything else I've previously bitched about on this blog, I really shouldn't be bitching because we're in PARADISE!
Love to all!
Sunday, July 1, 2007
''¡Estamos ratones flotando en mierda!''
Quote of the week. The translation is: "We are rats floating in shit!" Context: Chris and I were waiting in Livingston, Guatemala for our boat to leave and the man behind us apparantly was getting impatient and screamed this genious phrase to the boat driver. Guatemalans are not afraid to express their frusteration.
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So here's the bad news: I haven't found a computer in three weeks that will upload my photos. You'll all just have to be patient and wait.
Here's the good news: Chris and I just left Copan, Honduras, home of a world-famous archeological site that contains amazingly beautiful Maya ruins, inscrptions, and hieroglyphs. It totally won over Tikal, which was amazing, too, but I think I'm the kind of girl who prefers artsy incriptions. The presentation of the park is also much nicer in Copan, it's father from Disneyland than Tikal. The town of Copan Ruinas, just 1 km from the actual ruins, also just happened to be our favorite Central American town so far: great food, friendly people, gorgeous setting in a valley surrounded by mountains. I did, however, have my first experience of wanting to never ever be associated with backpackers. We went to a very popular backpacker bar run by pretentious Belgians who played videos of Madonna concerts all night long in their very posh establishment. They personally told us (with their noses lifted high) that their bar gave backpackers the opportunity to mix with real, local culture. Are you kidding me? The whole time the video was playing the only locals who were in the place (who just so happened to be the servers) grimaced as they watched Madonna sing from a cross posed as Christ. This is an extremely religious culture we're talking about. I wanted to hide under the table with embarassment.
Honduras is very beautiful. One challenge has been learning the new vocabulary words. Words like "jam" and "backpack" are entirely different here than they were in Guatemala. We actually had to revert back to gestures, how emasculating. Anyways, the food is cheaper, and another difference is the transportation is a little more expensive but the bus drivers actually help the passengers courteously. Tomorrow we are headed to Utila, one of the Bay Islands, reknowned for having the cheapest high-quality scuba diving in the world. We're really excited to try scuba, but we've been hearing and reading that the islands are very expensive and very out of control with their party scene. If it does turn out to be too much like Las Vegas on the beach, we may curtail our stay. But we definitely plan to stay through Chris' birthday which is on the 4th.
Hopefully none of you have felt like rats floating in shit lately...
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So here's the bad news: I haven't found a computer in three weeks that will upload my photos. You'll all just have to be patient and wait.
Here's the good news: Chris and I just left Copan, Honduras, home of a world-famous archeological site that contains amazingly beautiful Maya ruins, inscrptions, and hieroglyphs. It totally won over Tikal, which was amazing, too, but I think I'm the kind of girl who prefers artsy incriptions. The presentation of the park is also much nicer in Copan, it's father from Disneyland than Tikal. The town of Copan Ruinas, just 1 km from the actual ruins, also just happened to be our favorite Central American town so far: great food, friendly people, gorgeous setting in a valley surrounded by mountains. I did, however, have my first experience of wanting to never ever be associated with backpackers. We went to a very popular backpacker bar run by pretentious Belgians who played videos of Madonna concerts all night long in their very posh establishment. They personally told us (with their noses lifted high) that their bar gave backpackers the opportunity to mix with real, local culture. Are you kidding me? The whole time the video was playing the only locals who were in the place (who just so happened to be the servers) grimaced as they watched Madonna sing from a cross posed as Christ. This is an extremely religious culture we're talking about. I wanted to hide under the table with embarassment.
Honduras is very beautiful. One challenge has been learning the new vocabulary words. Words like "jam" and "backpack" are entirely different here than they were in Guatemala. We actually had to revert back to gestures, how emasculating. Anyways, the food is cheaper, and another difference is the transportation is a little more expensive but the bus drivers actually help the passengers courteously. Tomorrow we are headed to Utila, one of the Bay Islands, reknowned for having the cheapest high-quality scuba diving in the world. We're really excited to try scuba, but we've been hearing and reading that the islands are very expensive and very out of control with their party scene. If it does turn out to be too much like Las Vegas on the beach, we may curtail our stay. But we definitely plan to stay through Chris' birthday which is on the 4th.
Hopefully none of you have felt like rats floating in shit lately...
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